Katie Rose Pryal
Bipolar-AuDHD author, storyteller, and educator viewing the world through the lens of neurodiversity expertise
Chapel Hill, NC
RECENT BOOKS
RECENT AWARDS INCLUDE
- 2025 INDIES Finalist, Family & Relationships/Adult Nonfiction: Your Kid Belongs Here (Award winners are announced in June)
- 2024 IPPY Bronze Medal in Education: A Light In The Tower
- 2021 Pushcart Prize nomination: “The Holes We Live With,” in Full Grown People
- 2022 IPPY Gold Medal in Romance: Take Your Charming Somewhere Else
- 2021 RAINN featured selection: Even If You’re Broken
- 2020 IPPY Gold Medal in women’s issues, Even If You’re Broken
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katie Rose Pryal, J.D., Ph.D., tells stories about the outsiders, the misfits, and the beautifully complicated. She is a bipolar-autistic writer, author, keynote speaker, educator, and expert in mental health and neurodiversity.
Her work has been featured in Catapult, Psychology Today, Slate, The Chronicle of Higher Education, NPR, Ecotone, Full Grown People, and many more, and she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her essay writing. Her books have received multiple accolades, including the IPPY Gold and Bronze Medals and the Foreword INDIES Gold Award.
Her award-winning nonfiction books on neurodiversity and mental health include Your Kid Belongs Here: An Insider’s Guide to Parenting Neurodiverse Children, the IPPY-winning A Light in the Tower: A New Reckoning with Mental Health in Higher Education, and many more. She also writes romance novels, including Entanglement and the IPPY-winning Take Your Charming Somewhere Else. Her upcoming books include a literary memoir, An Autistic Girl’s Guide to Horses (West Virginia University Press) and Neurodivergent & Expecting: An Insider’s Guide to Planning, Pregnancy, and Post-Partum (Johns Hopkins University Press).
Pryal lives in North Carolina with her two children, two horses, a houseful of adopted pets, and one outstanding spouse. Find her on Substack at The Misfit Manifesto.
MOST RECENT BOOK
Combining personal stories, research, and practical strategies, Katie Rose Pryal shares her journey as a neurodivergent mother raising neurodivergent children and offers a powerful narrative of advocacy, empathy, and resilience. Your Kid Belongs Here is a heartfelt insider guide to parenting children in a world not designed for them—or their parents—addressing the unique challenges faced by neurodiverse families while celebrating the strengths of neurodivergent children and parents alike.
This book outlines strategies for supporting emotional regulation and managing children’s meltdowns, anxiety, and other emotional challenges and discusses how to create spaces where children can express their true selves, as a foil to the psychological impact of masking. It also offers balanced insights into medication use, addressing societal shame, and emphasizing informed, personalized choices; and guides parents on navigating schools and advocating for their child’s rights in educational settings, including securing accommodations like IEPs and 504 plans.
With a focus on building trust, fostering self-advocacy, and embracing neurodiversity, this empowering, empathetic book—which originated from a series of literary personal essays—invites readers to reimagine how inclusive and supportive parenting can contribute to a more compassionate world.
TIMELY TIE-INS
JUNE
- Neurodiversity Pride Week – 11-17
- Neurodiversity Pride Day – 16
- Learning Disability Week – 15-21
JULY
- World Brain Day – 22
OCTOBER:
- ADHD Awareness Month
- World Day of Bullying Prevention – 5
- National Day Without Stigma – 9
- World Mental Health Day – 10
- Invisible Disabilities Week – 18-24
PRAISE
Praise for Your Kid Belongs Here
“An autistic mother provides lots of practical advice on raising her kids. Essential reading for parents, teachers, and professionals.”
—Temple Grandin, author of Thinking in Pictures
“Pryal, a bipolar-autistic mother of two children with ADHD and autism, offers an empathetic handbook on raising neurodiverse children…. a sensitive and comprehensive resource.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A heartfelt, practical guide to parenting children in a world not designed for them—or their parents. Combining personal stories, research, and helpful strategies, Katie Rose Guest Pryal shares her journey as a neurodivergent mother raising neurodivergent children and offers a powerful narrative of advocacy, empathy, and resilience.”
—Foreword
“This brave, brilliant, beautiful book empowers parents to trust their neurodivergent children and help others appreciate their children’s full humanity. Dr. Pryal provides a fresh, incisive, heart-filled perspective for all who seek to advocate for children to create a more inclusive world.”
―Marion Underwood, author of Social Aggression among Girls
Praise for Life of the Mind Interrupted
“Personal, political, polemical, and pointed in its vision…. If you want to understand how higher education is built, and not built, for people with disabilities—especially mental health-related one—Pryal’s book is for you.”
—Book Riot
QUESTIONS
- All of your books—whether nonfiction or fiction, memoir, or prescriptive—center neurodiversity and mental health. Why is that the common thread in your work?
- Your Kid Belongs Here began life as a series of essays you wrote for the literary magazine Catapult. Not being a self-help writer per se, tell me about navigating the ‘parenting guide’ space?
- There is personal storytelling at the beginning of each chapter of Your Kid Belongs Here; how do you tie such stories with research to affirm other parents?
- Your body of published work is diverse, ranging from academic to poetic and everything in between. What drives your writing?
- You are a successful public speaker. How does that form of storytelling differ from your writing?
- How has being Bipolar-AuDHD affected your writing career?
- You are also a neurodivergent-affirming writing coach and editor, and you team in an MFA in creative writing program. How does teaching writing affect your own work?
- Your first book on neurodiversity, Life of the Mind Interrupted (2019), is a highly-regarded essay collection that ranges from the deeply personal to the polemic. How much has your work changed since that book?
BOOK DETAILS
Pub Date: May 17, 2022
Genre: Memoir / Christian Inspirational
Publisher: She Writes Press
Page Count: 304
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1647429003
Price: $15.99